Military, security, and law enforcement personnel conduct training in order to experience and learn from mistakes prior to a “real world” event. Small arms and vehicle marksmanship training involves a mix of techniques, including firing live ammunition on a firearm range. An important training technique is live, force-on-force training. In such training, participants in a field environment employ tactics and their full range of firearm systems against each other. An important component of such training is proper employment of the trainees' firearms while reinforcing proper tactics, techniques, and procedures.
Current state of the art employs laser emitters on the Shooters' firearms and laser sensors on the targets. An exemplar system of this type is the Multiple Integrated Laser Engagement System, or MILES. In laser engagement systems an emitter mounted on the firearm generates a laser signal when the firearm's trigger is pulled and a blank cartridge creates the appropriate acoustic, flash, and/or shock signature. These types of laser engagement systems suffer many drawbacks that collectively provide “negative training”, that is training that results in incorrect results or behaviors. The present invention addresses each of these drawbacks.
The first major drawback to laser engagement systems is that they cannot be used to engage partially occluded targets, such as a target that is partially hidden behind a bush. Terrain features that would not stop an actual projectile block lasers. There is evidence that in exercises involving laser engagement systems participants incorrectly learn to take cover behind terrain that would not stop a bullet, resulting in higher casualties in their initial firefights. Similarly, obscurants, such as smoke or fog, may block a laser, stopping participants from successfully engaging legitimate targets.
Proper marksmanship techniques involve aiming slightly ahead of or leading a moving target. The second major drawback of laser engagement systems is that participants are penalized for leading moving targets. Lasers travel in a straight line and are nearly instantaneous. When engaging a moving target with a laser engagement system, participants must—incorrectly—aim at the target, not ahead of it. This is another source of negative training.
Bullets travel in a parabolic trajectory, not a straight line. The sights of firearms are aligned with the barrel of the firearm so that the path of the bullet intersects the line of sight at specified distances, such as 25 and 250 meters, based on how the weapon is bore sighted. At different ranges the bullet's trajectory may be above or below the line of sight so that when firing at shorter ranges the Shooter may have to aim below the center of mass of the target and at longer ranges the Shooter may have to aim above the center of mass. With laser engagement systems, employing these proper marksmanship techniques often results in incorrect misses being recorded, which is yet another source of negative training.
Laser engagement systems project a beam from the emitter toward the target, where one or more detectors worn by the target sense the beam. The beam has a wider diameter as it travels farther due to diffraction. This results in anomalous situations. At short ranges, the beam may be so small that it does not trigger any detectors even though the beam strikes the center of mass of the target. At longer distances, the beam may be so wide that it triggers a detector even though the center of the beam is far from the intended target. Again, these phenomena result in negative training.
Lasers travel in a straight line. This makes laser engagement systems incapable of representing high-trajectory, or non-line of sight, firearms, such as grenade launchers and rifle grenades. As these firearms often represent a significant percent of a military unit's firepower, the inability to simulate them has a negative impact on training. Small unit leaders do not have the opportunity to train to employ these firearms as part of their actions in contact with an enemy and the operators of those firearms do not get a chance to employ them as part of a tactical situation.
Lasers are instantaneous. Armed forces often employ relatively slow moving weapons like anti-tank guided missiles (ATGMs) whose time of flight between the Shooter and the target can be a few seconds. With these systems, it is important for the Shooter to maintain his sight picture of the target throughout the time of flight. Since lasers strike the target almost instantaneously with the pull of the trigger, these slower weapons are not represented realistically in live, force-on-force training.
Finally, laser engagement systems rely on a laser signal striking detectors. Participants who want to win the training event often go to some length to obscure or cover the detectors. A solution that does not rely on a signal striking a detector would be advantageous.
State of the art for mixed and augmented reality technologies has proven insufficient to address live, force-on-force training, largely because they rely on very precise tracking of the participants' locations and the orientations of their firearms. Current tracking technologies used to estimate participant and firearm location and orientation are insufficient to support long-range direct fire. Tracking solutions developed for augmented reality (AR) only support engagements at ranges of approximately 50 meters, but military personnel are trained to fire at targets at 375 meters.
Techniques have been proposed that involve active emitters on the targets to make them easier to sense; however, many military, security, and law-enforcement personnel wear night vision devices. An emitter that is visible in night vision devices is another source of negative training as it may make targets unrealistically easy to detect in the environment.
Other techniques have been proposed which rely on indicia to properly identify targets and compute hits and misses. Techniques involving indicia suffer from many of the same drawbacks as laser engagement systems, namely that they do not enable non-line of sight engagements and they do not permit firing through obscurants and terrain features like bushes and tall grass.
A technology that addresses the shortcomings of laser engagement systems would be advantageous to military, security, and law enforcement professionals and might even be applied to entertainment uses. A solution that permits firing through obscurants and fire at partially occluded targets would improve live, force-on-force training. A solution that takes into account the ballistic characteristics of the simulated projectile with respect to the projectiles trajectory as well as time of flight would enable participants to properly elevate their firearm based on the range to the target and to lead moving targets. If such a system also permitted high-trajectory or non-line of sight fire, that would be advantageous. It would also be advantageous for a system to require no indicia, emitter, or beacons. Finally such a system should enable accurate credit for a hit or miss out to realistic ranges, based on the firearm system being simulated.
Shooting simulation systems may be seen in the Carter U.S. Pat. Nos. 8,888,491 and 8,459,997 and 8,678,824. These patents teach an optical recognition system for simulated shooting using a plurality of firearms with each firearm held by a separate player. Each player has a computer and an optical system associated with the firearm for capturing an image. The image provides information on a trajectory of a simulated bullet fired from a shooting firearm and is used to determine a hit or miss of the targeted player. Each player is wearing some type of indicia such as color codes, bar codes, helmet shape for identification which does not allow non-line of sight engagements and does not permit firing through obscurants and terrain features like bushes and tall grass.
The Sargent U.S. Pat. No. 8,794,967 is for a firearm training system for actual and virtual moving targets. A firearm has a trigger initiated image capturing device mounted thereon and has a processor and a display. The Lagettie et al. U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2011/0207089 is for a firearm training system which uses a simulated virtual environment. The system includes a firearm having a scope and a tracking system and a display and a processor.